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Recycle Old Cell Phones at ReCellular This Earth Day

Today is the 40th Anniversary for Earth Day and never before have we been so aware of our impact on our beautiful planet.  From the number one grossing movie Avatar to hybrid cars and well eco everything we know we must do our part to make our world a greener place.

Last year I became eco-econo Cristina by trading in my Mini Cooper that I didn’t use much anymore for Muni, Bart and the occasional Zipcar rental  (they have Mini’s, convertible ones too!) to visit my Napa Valley friends.

This year, I started spring cleaning my closet only to find my tech tub (tub full of cords, wires, gadgets, etc.) with an old Nokia phone, a Razor, a Palm Treo, and a Blackberry!  It was like finding old love letters from my ex’s before my one true love, my iPhone (aka my iPrecious) came into my life.  What’s a girl to do with all her ex cell phones?  Better yet, what’s a green girl to do with all these discarded mobile devices? (more…)

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Get Your Groupon! Daily Deals at Your Favorite Places

It appears many tarts are watching their purse strings these days but just because we have become frugalistas does that mean we have to skip the occasional and much needed spa day!?

Not anymore.  Now we can pamper away and enjoy many other special treats in town guilt free thanks to Groupon.  It works just like it sounds as a “group” “coupon”, a Groupon that with enough people interested in the deal, the price is discounted and you save sometimes up to 80% off your favorite sushi spot, salon or ski slopes.

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TechTarts Tartorial on the Highly Addictive App Foursquare

The tarts are hooked on our new favorite app called Foursquare, a location-based social network that lets you connect with friends using GPS via your mobile device at your favorite places.

This app is so addictive because you can check in at your hot spots and leave tips about what you love, see where your friends are checking in and receive deals from the businesses you check in at or specials nearby. But the best part is the game element that allows you to earn points, badges and become the mayor of your favorite place.

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A Diner’s Delight: Make Reservations with OpenTable

Although fervent users of this service would never dream of showing up at a restaurant without first checking OpenTable, many people aren’t even aware it exists. OpenTable is an online reservation system that links restaurants to its website where diners can log on to find and request a table at a specific time, as well as make special requests of the host(ess).  It also allows you to notify the other guests in your party by automatically delivering an email message to them with the restaurant name, the time of your reservation and links to directions and maps. (more…)

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No Love? Find Mr. Wonderful and Play Matchmaker on Facebook with Thread

I can just hear the Matchmaker song playing from the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof, ‘Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch. Matchmaker, matchmaker look through your Facebook, and make me a perrrfect maaatch’.  Now that is a modern romance.

But seriously, have you ever been set up by a friend? Do you wish you could meet Mr. Wonderful the old fashioned way by an introduction through someone in your social circle? Well, now you can take old traditions and mix them with new technologies by using Thread to connect you or your single friends through Facebook.

We all know the best way to meet Mr. Wonderful is through friends and Thread lets us do just that with a modern twist to introductions through Facebook. The best part is you don’t have to set up a profile like traditional online dating sites, you simply go to the Thread site and log in with your Facebook account to establish a profile.

Once you are logged in, you can invite your friends to Thread and begin your quest as cupid or see if Mr. Wonderful is possibly in your friends of friends network. Considering there are over 400 million Facebook users the chances are more likely that Mr. Wonderful is on Facebook than a traditional online dating site and you receive the introduction from someone you know versus meeting a stranger.

Thread lets you Find Matches with a Daily Shuffle of your friends of friends in which you decide if you find him interesting or simply click ‘next’ (I wish I had that button on some of my blind dates!).  You can also filter your match preferences with more details such as age, tall, funny and kind.  In addition, girlfriends everywhere can begin to Make Matches for their friends and earn matchmaking badges for helping a sister out and suggesting some friends that just might be the right guy for her (yes, I am trying to set up Tart Rachel above in the example).  Who would not want a friend to recommend the possible love of their life?

With their Browse People feature you see rows of potential boyfriend material and have the option to favorite them, ask a friend to meet them, or hide them from your search results. When you ‘ask a friend’ to meet someone, your profile is then sent with eight others to be reviewed so only if he clicks ‘yes’ that he is also interested does Thread then disclose your identity with a notification that you both are interested in each other.  This process eliminates awkwardness, gets everyone sharing the love and feeling good to help a friend find their true love.

Finding a future husband cannot be calculated but it does not hurt to have the help of your friends who know you well and want the best for you. We are all Facebook stalking anyhoo, might as well get a merit badge for introducing my BFri (short for Best Friend) to a great guy.

xoxo

tt.c

twitter-@CristinaSF

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Send Some Love this V-Day with Four Fun Love Note Sites

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and rather than point you to the myriad places where you could find heart-shaped candy and fluffy teddy bears, I’m going to remind you that nobody ever said this day of love had to be confined to your boy or girl toy only. What about all those friends you have scattered across the country who you’ve been meaning to get in touch with…tomorrow. (“I promise!”)

Well, I put together a couple of fun services available to you on the web now, so that with minimal effort on your part, your friends and loved ones all over the place will get the message that they’re in your heart this coming Valentine’s day (or anytime!)

First up, who doesn’t love snail mail? The feeling you get when you open up your mailbox and there’s something inside it that isn’t a bill? Or some junk ad? Priceless! That’s why I love Blurtt, a fun service that makes it easy to send cute, customizable postcards to just about anybody you have a warm feeling about– you don’t even have to know their address! How does it work? When you pick a person to send your blurtt to, you can connect to them through Twitter, or Facebook Connect, or even just by knowing their email address– Blurtt will reach out to them and alert them that they have a friend who wants to send them something, and they provide their mailing address straight to the service, in a secure and verified trustworthy fashion. All you pay is 99 cents for everything, including the shipping! That’s pretty much foolproof, if you ask me.

Another cute entrant to the snail mail post card category is Tripletz, which is similar to Blurtt in that the product is physical post cards, but has it’s own unique twist: they are messages delivered in triplets. So picture this: you get one postcard at a time, and it always has just one word on it. Ultimately you will get three, and they will form a complete thought. The sample cards in the homepage first spelled out “You’re” + “Such” + “a Schmuck.” Upon reload, a new picture showed me “How” + “Are” + “U?” These three part messages are super cute and prolong the suspense and tingly feelings associated with getting mail. The complete message will set you back $4.99 plus shipping and handling, but the amount of awesome designs they have available AND the “buy three sets get one set free” deal make Tripletz a super compelling service, a promise of fun and laughs for just over $5. I’d do it!

The last entry in the snail mail category may just be my favorite. It’s called The Poetry Store and the service is exactly that! Here’s how it works: You want a poem. You choose from a selection of paper that your poem will get printed on. You fill out some vague “idea” you want it to be about, or a description of a person. The poem is ready in 6 minutes.  The poet at the “store” types it up on an old school typewriter and ships it for you to the address you provided. For $6! If that’s not awesome, my name isn’t Maya. So you KNOW it’s awesome.

Finally, for all you digerati out there who are all “out with the old, in with the new” I will depart from snail mail for my last choice. We’ve all received an E-card at some point or another, and either laughed with pleasure or winced with pain. Those babies are definitely a hit or miss (very, very miss) type deal. But with SomeEcards, you can forget the sad, technicolor live-action e-cards of yore and welcome in snarky, fun, scathing and completely witty messages that just about anyone will appreciate. Check out these gems on the front page: “Show how much you care this Valentine’s Day by not picking her up in a Toyota.” (Yowch…and Hah!) Or, under the “Thinking of You” tab, “I hope you realize how empty your life would be without me.” I mean, you would have to have no sense of humor at all not to at least snicker. You can buy the cards in physical form through the store for about $2.49 each, but you could also send them as free ecards! Who doesn’t love free, and who won’t love some fantastically sarcastic, dry wit to brighten up their inbox?

No matter which of these services you choose, you could rest assured that the person on the receiving end of this deal will smile with the knowledge that you are thinking about them, no matter where in the world you are, at that very moment. Happy Valentine’s Day!

xoxo

tt.mg

twitter-@papayamaya

The love letter picture is creative commons to be attributed to SunshineCity on Flickr.

Guest writer tt.mg- Maya Grinberg is a young geek extraordinaire (or possibly an ordinaire, but she prefers not to think that.) She is a proud graduate of Cornell University and hails from New York City by way of Belarus. She transplanted to Silicon Valley to surround herself with the tech-loving community she dreamt of becoming a part of, and so far, it seems to be working.
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